Internet or “online”, video gaming is a multi-billion-dollar industry http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF—2011.pdf. Evolving from public-arcade style video games such as “Pac-Man” where a player competes against the game, and home-based video games such as “Pong” with its relatively simple back-and-forth tennis-match style of video game-playing that allowed two players to compete against each other, the industry has evolved to highly sophisticated, interactive games that allow players around the world, at all hours of the day, to play and compete with each other in a real-time, competitive basis. This evolutionary process has been driven primarily by the Internet because the Internet allows players at literally any location with access to the Internet, and who own or have access to the software to play these games, to get “online” and join others in individual-competitive and team-competitive games. These games can attract millions of players around the world on a daily basis. For example, first-person shooter games (or “shooters”), such as the “Call of Duty” series by Activision®, have over 30-million players who have played the game online at least once a month. http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/05/call-of-duty-elite/
While these online games are different in terms of genre, weapons, etc., in general, the common thread is the ability of a player to compete in a fictional “cyber-world”, and use some type of control device (usually hand held such as a “joy-stick”) to take on the persona of a fictional character in the cyber-world, and via the control device, manipulate that character to engage various devices carried or used by the character (such as weapons), engage in activities required by the character (such as walking, running, discharging a weapon, etc.) and work together with those on their “team” to defeat fictional characters on another “team” who also are manipulated by other players. For example, in “military-based” games, typically players compete on behalf of one “country” against both individuals and teams who represent another “country” using weapons typical of the particular war-genre of the game. Winners are most typically individuals who score the most points.
These games all have in common the requirement of player-skill, for example, advanced hand-eye coordination, intelligence, memory, creativity, strategy, and highly developed competition skills. Luck or “chance” is rarely, if ever, a component of these games, and when luck is involved, it is typically “dumb luck” or “beginner's luck” i.e. an accidental outcome often occasioned by the mistake of another player, etc. The actual games themselves do not build a luck component into the process; rather, player-skill is what determines the outcome of the competition. Because these games require human-human interaction in a cyber-world, the outcome of the game is based on the skill of the player in manipulating his/her cyber-persona; stated differently, the game programs are not designed to artificially enhance the skill level of one player over another in any random manner, such that the element of skill is exclusive in the outcome determination (except for, as noted, “dumb luck”).
A negative aspect of these online games is cheating. Increasingly, in a desire to artificially enhance the skill-set of a player or players to defeat those who are skilled and do not require an artificial advantage, there are always players who wish to gain an unfair advantage over others by using game exploits or external programs which offer an “advantage” over other players. These exploits and external programs (also referred to as “cheats”) are analogous to professional athletes who use steroids to enhance their performance, thus creating an unfair advantage over players who rely solely on their own skills, talents and knowledge of the athletic contest. Cheats come in many forms such as “wall-hacks” which overlay a “heads-up” type display over the user's screen—highlighting or placing a virtual box over their opponents and also allowing the user to literally see their opponents through solid objects such as walls and buildings, which gain the user a large tactical, and unfair, advantage. Another cheat example is commonly known as an “aimbot”, which in first-person shooters, automatically aims and shoots the user's weapon at opponents without requiring any skill on the part of the user. Yet another cheat overlays a virtual map for the user of the entire battlefield and shows all players (team members as Ill as opponents), allowing the user a large tactical, and yet again unfair, advantage over opponents. These are only a small example of the many hundreds of cheats and variations of cheats widely available as paid programs created by professional companies, privately created and used and those which are created by the hacking community and distributed free in public gaming forums.
All game cheats have one thing in common: they are program applications (or “cheat programs”) that must be run on the user's computer in unison with the game they are playing. Stated differently, the cheat is a program that is run simultaneously with the game, whereby both are run in unison as the game is played. Players who are not at the computer that is running the cheat program do not know that the cheat program is being run, unless the cheating itself is detected or determined. In an analogous manner, a cheat is akin to a student laying the answer-key over a classroom test and seeing what the correct answer-choices are—unless the teacher or a fellow-student sees the answer key being used in conjunction with the test that every other student is taking, there is no way to know with certitude that cheating on the test took place.
Regardless of type or source, these cheats allow for an unfair advantage over skilled players who compete based on a presumed “level playing field”. As with any competition, cheating not only reduces the ability of true competitors to know how they “lost” but allows the cheater to gain an improper status and advantage over legitimate players. In the “cyber world” of online gaming, detecting such cheaters is often difficult. More importantly, because the development of cheat software has become a “cottage industry”, the ability to make the competitions more robust, using for example, prizes, is difficult, time consuming and expensive—unless a player can be assured that all reasonable steps have been taken to prevent the use of cheats, it is difficult to assume a level playing field. This not only reduces the ability to make the competitions more robust, but also weakens the allure of skill and the requirement of fair play.
Of equal importance is the significant damage that can be done to the reputations of game developers and sales of their products under which cheating has become rampant. Matthew Pritchard, a developer at Ensemble Studios, aptly summarizes this problem: “Cheating hit closer to home for me while I was working on the final stages of Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. Cheating online became a widespread problem with the original Age of Empires. Tournaments had to be cancelled due to a lack of credibility, the number of online players fell, and the reputation of my company took a direct hit from frustrated users. Unable to spare the resources to fix the game properly until after Age of Kings was done, I just had to endure our users turning their anger upon us—probably the most personally painful thing I've experienced as a developer.” http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3149/how_to_hurt_the_hackers_the_scoop_.php.
Players using these widely available cheats have become a widespread epidemic for the online gaining world. Large and established gaming companies such as “Activision”, “Electronic Arts” and even “Microsoft, just to name a few, are constantly playing a game of “cat and mouse” with cheating players, combating whichever cheats they can detect and releasing game updates and actively banning players that are caught cheating. This method of releasing updates to block the cheat or catch cheating players has been the primary approach game makers have been taking. The problem with this method is that, in order for a counter-cheating agent to be created, game makers must first detect and then devise a method to anti-cheat the hack—all of which takes time; sometimes up to weeks and months in total. In addition, the cost can be staggering; if the cheating is not stopped, players will abandon one game for another, causing significant loss in revenue, coupled with what requires significant time and effort to “block” the cheating with software changes to the original game program.
Part of the allure of cheating at these games is related to the Internet—anonymity as to name and location, a desire to win in order to be perceived as the best by fellow gamers, and little if any punishment when caught, all combine to make the process of cheating almost as powerful as the desire to use one's innate skills to win. Because players often do not use their real names (rather using “screen names”), and because their specific location is often unknown, the only way to track down a cheater is to identify the cheater's Internet Protocol address (“IP address”), which is a numerical label assigned to each device (e.g., computer) participating in a computer network that uses the Internet for communication. However, even if the user's “screen name” and IP address are identified and that player is banned from competition, that player merely needs to create a new “screen name” and secure a different computer which will have a different IP address in order to continue cheating. Detecting the IP address and blocking that address from competition is often laborious, expensive and difficult, whereas creating a new user name and securing a new computer and IP address is simple.
As the online competitive gaming process increases, the desire to enhance the stakes by providing prizes for winners is increasing. However, given the recognized ability of cheats to gain an unfair advantage in these competitions, awarding prizes is often not an option. This is particularly true where cash prizes are contemplated.
For a gaming model which involves players competing in a tournament for cash and prizes on a daily basis, the currently used methods of slow detection and anti-cheating game cheats is not feasible. This is because cheating parties could run their cheats to gain an unfair advantage over other players and win several tournament payouts before being detected. This single fact of not being able to detect, deter, and block cheating is why online gaming tournaments has not successfully accomplished by any companies, large or small, to date.
One approach to help reduce such cheating would be via a virtual private network (“VPN”). A VPN is a means of connecting to a private “local area network” at a remote location, using the Internet or any unsecure public network to transport the network data packets privately, using encryption. The VPN uses authentication to deny access to unauthorized users, and encryption to prevent unauthorized users from reading the private network packets—in this case, the encryption could be used in theory to prevent cheating software from being utilized. The VPN can be used to send any kind of network traffic securely, including voice, video or data. VPNs may also allow users to bypass regional internet restrictions such as firewalls, and web filtering, by “tunneling” the network connection to a different region. Technically, the VPN protocol encapsulates network data transfers using a secure cryptographic method between two or more networked devices which are not on the same private network, to keep the data private as it passes through the connecting nodes of a local or wide area network. While VPNs are frequently used by remote workers or companies with remote offices to share private data and network resources, in this context, online gamers would essentially connect to the host-server via a VPN such that only software available at the host server would be available to the gamers—if the cheat software is not on the host server, the VPN would prevent the gamer from using any such software, even if the cheat software is on the gamers' computer. In the context of online wagering, Station Casino Sports Connection indicates that it uses a VPN with respect to its business of facilitating placing wagers on sporting events. http://www.stationsportsconnection.com/Help/index.htm.
Other, more proactive, approaches have been proffered to deter on-line cheating. One approach, developed by Even Balance, Inc. and offered through its Punk Buster Website at http://www.evenbalance.com/, self-dubbed as the “original Anti-Cheat system for online multiplayer games.” The Punk Buster software operates in a manner akin to various anti-virus software, and as noted by Evan Balance, the software provides “[r]eal-time scanning of memory by [Punk Buster] Client on players' computers searching for known hacks/cheats.” As further elucidated, “PunkBuster is an automatically self-updating client/server Anti-Cheat software system. That means that players run the PunkBuster Client software while they are playing online games and also, PunkBuster Server software is running on the game server that players connect to for gameplay. The PunkBuster system is designed to hold all participants accountable by scanning the game computers looking for known cheats, game hacks, and exploits similar to the way Anti-Virus software would scan a computer looking for a virus. PunkBuster does not modify any files or settings on your computer even if it detects some type of violation, it reports what it finds and, in some cases, will remove offending players from the current game. PunkBuster is optional. A Server Admin who decides to run PunkBuster on his or her Game Server is simply choosing to limit players on said Game Server to players who have chosen to enable PunkBuster on their playing computers. You do not have to enable PunkBuster if you are uncomfortable with the idea of such software. However, PunkBuster is not “spyware” nor is it a trojan—it is designed for groups of honest people to use together in an effort to keep out players who are unwilling to subject their system to an objective third-party software system scanning their computer during gameplay.” “PunkBuster For Players” PunkBuster Online Countermeasure, http://www.evenbalance.com/publications/aa-pl/#faq Nov. 8, 2010.
Another approach is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,169,050, issued on Jan. 30, 2007 to Tyler. In accordance with this described process, the concept “provides an additional level of authority, above the individual game servers, via a master database of cheaters that resides on one or more master servers and with which individual game servers communicate to transmit cheaters banned on the individual game servers and to receive a master list of cheaters aggregated from the individual game servers. In this way, once a cheater is banned on one game server, information identifying the cheater is transmitted to the master databases of the master servers for distribution to the other game servers. Advantageously, cheaters can no longer move from game server to game server in an attempt to continue cheating.” “Summary of the Invention”, U.S. Pat. No. 7,169,050.
Still another approach is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,753,795, issued on Jul. 13, 2010 to Harris and Schnieder and assigned to Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC of Foster City, Calif., USA. In accordance with the described process and software, the concept sets forth a “method for maintaining community integrity in a gaming network, comprising: monitoring one or more devices interacting with a game in the gaming network for indicia of violation of one or more rules, the one or more rules defining fair game play; identifying at least one user associated with one of the one or more monitored devices as a cheater based on at least the indicia of violation of the one or more rules defining fair game play, the indicia of violation indicating the presence of illicit game play; querying the one or more monitored devices associated with the at least one user identified as a cheater to determine the presence of new code or modified code associated with violating the one or more rules defining fair game play; and penalizing the cheater for engaging in illicit game play when a response to a query is not received or when the response includes an incorrect response, and the illicit game play is in violation of the one or more rules defining fair game play, wherein penalizing the cheater includes overwriting code on the device associated with the at least one user identified as a cheater.” Claim 1, U.S. Pat. No. 7,753,795.
Further still another approach is described in United States Patent Application Publication Number 20080305869 (published on Dec. 11, 2008) by Konforty and Shimon and assigned to Cognisafe Ltd., Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. In accordance with the described process, “a program installed on a computer learns normal patterns of use of the assets of the computer and, based on the learned patterns, monitors the computer to detect events that may be indicative of cheating. Such cheating may include both deviant behavior by the user of the computer itself and attempts to compromise the computer carried out by users of other computers. The program implements generic methods of learning and analysis, which are not limited to a specific game or other application.” “Summary of the Invention”, US Publication Number 20080305869.
An ideal solution to the problem of cheat software that would be different than a VPN approach would be the ability of an organization or group to monitor these tournaments independently from the developers of the games such that regardless of game, tournaments can be played in an environment where prizes can be awarded and the ability of cheating is substantially nullified. Most ideally, the approach would avoid a requirement that software be downloaded onto the player's computer, or require a player to take affirmative steps to self-police; if a group of players includes one player who refuses to cooperate, those who use such software will continue to be “victims” to the player who opts out and thus can continue to cheat. Self-monitoring, or requiring players to download software to monitor that player's computer, pre-suppose that all players want to play “fair”—but if that Ire the case, no players would cheat. A more robust approach is to create an environment on which players can play, but to have that environment “referee” the process. In an analogous manner, such a solution would be akin to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) whose core purpose is to “govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner.” http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/ncaa/about+the+ncaa. (The NCAA has neither commented upon, nor endorsed our inventions). In this context, the NCAA does not “own” the sport or the teams. Rather, the NCAA “overlays” the process of competitive sporting events at the college level, and provides a system that allows for teams to compete based on skill under a rubric of defined rules and regulations, regardless of game, that ensures fairness and impartiality by providing referees who ensure that cheating does not occur. By reducing the ability of one team to cheat, the outcome of the event is respected, and players can focus on competition, rather than wondering if a “victory” was based on an unfair advantage.
An ability to provide an NCAA-like approach to online gaming would not only enhance the playing experience, but allow for the ability of true competitive tournaments with prizes awarded to the winners.